Sovereign Nations

Hot!!! Man, is that an under-statement!

The past week has been in and out of the 100′s like a Pynchonian simile (here)…

Damn, it’s been hot!

…So I had this customer come in to my (evil empire) work place the other day asking me if I’d ever heard of an “ice-box A/C unit”. I had never heard of such a thing but we, the customer and I, got into a heated (ha-ha) discussion about how one would go about making such a contraption. Anyway, inspired by the above record breaking temp’s in the Chesapeake Bay I went home on my day off and made one $17.00, 12 volt (off the grid) Ice-Box Air Conditioning Unit.

Here’s how I did it…

…First, I got a cheap, ok, it was free, cooler from work, an in-line bilge blower (far-right), two vents (left), a length of flexi-duct hose, a push-pull on-off switch and a drain plug…

… I installed the blower motor, the electrical wiring and the switch in a small group in the upper right corner of the cooler then I ran the 14 gauge wire out of the box.

…After that I cut an input air vent the same size as the blower output on the opposite side of the cooler, once again, in the upper right hand corner.

…I put a 12 volt cigarette lighter male-plug on the end of the wire and ran it into the cockpit.

… Then all you have to do is fill it up with ice, run the ducting to your favorite place (in our case it’s the companion way entrance) and turn that sucker on!

We’ll see how it goes, so far it’s been pretty cool, a bit on the loud side, even though the fan motor is inside the cooler, but I think it’s brought the temperature down in the main saloon about 10 degrees and for now I think I’ll just go off and pat myself on the back for a project well done!

First of all, it’s hot.  Crazy hot.  And it’s been hot for a long time and it’s not even August so it’ll continue to be hot for a long time to come.  Why, oh why, did we move to Baltimore during a record-breaking winter and remain through a ridiculous summer?  Oh, right – the sure thing.

For the most part, I like the sure thing.  I think a sure thing is a lovely planning tool.  It’s easy to make a budget when you know what kind of income you’re going to have.  Working for the census, I didn’t know how long the job would last (and I’ve already made it safely through two layoffs, with another set of pink-slips being handed out on Friday the 30th).  I didn’t know how much overtime would be allowed.  But I sure as hell did the math on the guaranteed 40 hours at $18.54 plus the health and wellness payout of $3.35 (for the first 40 hours, not on overtime).  And that money pays the bills.

There’s a problem with the sure thing.  It’s limited.  It’s sure, but it’s not going to result in fabulous unexpected gains.  It usually doesn’t even result in fabulous unexpected happiness.  It is what it is.  It’s sure.

James has long been a proponent of the gamble, the hope, the wish, the maybe.  If there’s a sure thing, it’s a trap.  And you know what?  He’s right.

Hawaii was hard on me.  It was hard on James, too, but he felt it more socially/interpersonally.  I felt it more as a contraction of options.  We had so few places to go, so few jobs for which we could apply.  Sure things were hard to come by, and every one we found spoke the same language of wait, wait, wait.  We were looking at a decade in Hawaii before we’d be in a financial position to leave.

That was unacceptable.  We’re leavers by nature.  Four months is our average comfort time, and we can sometimes stretch that by moving within a geographical area.  But there weren’t enough options to keep us in Hawaii for ten years.  Even at six months each, that would have required twenty marinas, and Hawaii doesn’t have that many!

There are more marinas in Arizona than Hawaii.  True story.

So the sure thing in Hawaii was the biggest bummer.  And because I couldn’t find a decent sure thing, we gave up a boat that was capable of taking us anywhere, any time, in comfort and safety and happiness.

Doggedly plugging away at debt, at the boat work, at our books…this is a good and needful thing.  But also needful is the opening up of opportunity.  I’m ready for leaps and bounds.

We have a friend (hi Jason!) who has a grandfabulous idea.  It’s an idea that needs the kinds of energy and skill that we have.  And it could very well represent a leap in our traveling lives.

It’s not a sure thing.  It’s a gamble.  And I’m in.  I’m throwing my time, energy, and expertise into the pot and watching the cards turn.  If I can make it come out right, it will.  If not, I will be richer for experience even if I’m poorer for some hours and attention I could have spent elsewhere.

So here goes.  I’m entering a new phase.  I will plug away and leap at the same time.  I will open myself up and budget myself simultaneously.  I will take on too much and make myself bigger so that I can handle it.

I will:

• Finish my book-in-progress and write the one that’s obsessing me right now.
• Bring our boat into condition to be more comfortable for the next winter than it was for the last.
• Maintain a connection with my body through exercise and other feel-good stuff.  Wink.
• Earn extra dribs and drabs through piecework editing.
• Explore the idea of being a hands-on sex coach.

And last but not least:

• Build a socially and environmentally sustainable company from the ground up and reap the benefits of an entirely virtual business structure.

Leaping and bounding toward so many kinds of happiness.  Keep your eyes open – who knows where we’ll be this time next year!

I’m reading philosophy.  Not something I’ve done a whole lot of since school, mostly because I’ve always found it more interesting and urgent when framed in a story.

For example, Sherri S Tepper is certainly a person who has a philosophy that rings throughout her books, and her characters argue this philosophy through their actions, their interactions with each other, and sometime overtly in written conversation.  Or John Barth and Salman Rushdie, who do the same things in more elegant, ornate ways, with less of a traditional storyline structure.

Now I’m planning on exploring basic life themes through the book I’m going to write.  I have a character who is warming painfully from the frostbite of guilt and, strange to say, I’m not terribly familiar with guilt.  I know shame better but don’t even have much sense of shame.  Forgiveness, redemption, retribution…I need to get to know these things in order to question them deeply.

On a fundamental level, I am fascinated by, and confused by, the kinds of negative emotion that can ruin a life without any outside force whatsoever.  I believe in personal responsibility.  I believe that one must act in accordance with one’s own personal ethics in order to be a person of integrity.  But when I fail to do so, my next belief is that I should learn and do better.  I have never acted so out of accord that I have carried a debt of guilt.

One of the concepts I’ve been reading about is that people have a right to be punished.  That only in punishing misbehavior can society help a person exorcise guilt.  That guilt is responsive to punishment and forgiveness, not to change or an intention to do better.

Is this true?  Capital T True or true in some limited way?  Only in fiction can I ask all the questions and have different characters resolve them in various ways.

Externalizing punishment – is that the point?  Making it overt and discrete, with a specific duration and an understood amount of pain?  In this way, can a person release their guilt?

Do they have to trust their jury?  Can one be punished improperly for the crime, given a leniency one does not agree is warranted and therefore not be released from guilt?

One of the twelves steps in AA involves contacting the people you’ve hurt.  This has to be about guilt – only guilt can be expiated by forgiveness or punishment.  Right?  Shame is yours until you are no longer the person who acted in a way to create the shame.  But then maybe it’s about proving to oneself that you have changed, that you’re not the same person and so deserve not to feel shame?

I’m all question, no answer right this minute.  But that seems like a promising place to be at the beginning of this book.  I know what she did, I know how she has responded to her actions up until the beginning of the book.  She never dreamed a thaw was possible and is in horrific pain – worse than the shock-cushioned pain of understanding what she’d done.  (No, I will not give any hints about what that act was.)  Now I get to ask, through her and the people around her, all the questions I’m fascinated by.

Is self-punishment valid or does one need to be sentenced by the affected parties?

Does forgiveness by others equal release from the burden of guilt?

Can one live and love separately from one’s experience of guilt?

Once irrevocable action has been taken, can any further action balance out or pay back the harm done?

There’s a few of my questions.  Answers?  We’ll see.